ʻIKE
Game Design Studio & Publisher

Where learners become professionals — and where a game made in Hawaiʻi can reach
the world without giving up who owns it.

Mission

The professional studio, incubation, publishing, and commercialization division of ʻIKE. It transforms educational experience into market-ready intellectual property — and gives learners a place to work once they have outgrown the classroom.

Focus Areas

  • Studio Incubation
  • Publishing
  • Intellectual Property
  • Commercial Game Development
  • Mentorship
  • Distribution
  • Business Development
  • Industry Partnerships

What the Studio Does

  • Production. Develops original titles to commercial standard, employing graduates and experienced professionals side by side.
  • Incubation. Hosts small teams building their own titles, providing engines, tools, workspace, legal and business support, and production oversight.
  • Publishing. Provides the path to market that independent Pacific creators most often lack — funding, quality assurance, localization, storefront relations, marketing, and distribution.
  • IP stewardship. Manages licensing so that cultural intellectual property remains under Indigenous control through every commercial relationship.
  • Mentorship. Pairs learners with working professionals through internships, apprenticeships, and mentored production roles.

Image Gallery Here

Cultural IP Standards

The studio operates under standards that are stricter than commercial norm, because the material warrants it.
  1. Cultural content passes the Kuleana Gate before development begins, not before release.
  2. Lineage holders and cultural practitioners are consulted, credited, and compensated — consultation is a paid professional engagement, not a favor.
  3. Non-waivable protections apply to every agreement: no tokenization, no NFT minting, no AI training on protected cultural content without KMKK approval.
  4. Cultural IP developed with charitable funding remains with KMKK and is not severable from the steward.
  5. Access to internships and employment is open and non-preferential; charitably funded training does not create a private hiring pipeline for affiliated businesses.

Relationship to Commercial Partners

Two studio structures coexist by design: a studio within ʻIKE and a commercial partner studio outside it. Learners benefit from both — but every transaction between the nonprofit ecosystem and any for-profit entity is conducted at arm’s length, on documented fair-market terms, with a disinterested approver on at least one side, and with conflicts disclosed and recused in accordance with both organizations’ conflict-of-interest policies.

Governance note
Because leadership overlaps between the nonprofit entities and affiliated commercial entities, related-party transactions in this division carry elevated scrutiny. Section 24 sets out the required controls. These are not optional and should be reviewed with independent counsel and a CPA.